Help! It hurts when I do this.

Name: Dylan
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Location: Australia
Hi Dr Dick, I’ve got a painful and irritating problem that my GP wasn’t able to help with, so I’m hoping you can. After I spend time edging, or develop blueballs, I get an intense burning sensation in my urethra. It usually doesn’t happen until after I cum, then urinate, but occasionally it’ll happen while edging. If I sit on the toilet and push as though urinating, it calms down significantly, but returns when I stand up. It usually goes after about half an hour of. I had a STI check (Urethral Swab. Oww. No sounding for me thanks) and it came back all clean, and in all other respects my junk is normal. Any ideas about what’s going on, or how I can fix it? Thanks!

This reminds me of the old joke where a guy goes to see his doctor about a pain he is having. The doctor sits him down and asks him where it hurts. The guy says, “It hurts when I do this.” And he takes his hand, makes a fist and punches himself in the side of the head. The doctor nods knowingly and says, “Stop doing that, and I guarantee the pain will subside.”

Listen Dylan, whatever the root cause of the burning sensation you report is — and I can honestly say you have me stumped there — I pretty much can guarantee that it will subside if you cease the edging you are doing, or at least cut way back on that.

Like I said, I’ve never encountered this particular phenomenon before, so I can’t advise you further. And if your GP couldn’t put his finger on it, so to speak, and the burning sensation only happens when you edge or practice orgasm denial, then simply stop doing that and things will get better. I promise. After all, it’s not like you can’t live without edging. If, on the other hand, you said that you had discomfort every time you had an erection, then there’d be cause for alarm. But if the owie is only associated with something self-induced, then that’s a horse of a different color. See what I mean?

And here’s a tip: if you’re doing something that is causing pain or discomfort — and that’s not your intention — then your body is sending you a message that whatever you are doing it’s too much or it’s unhealthy. I am of the mind that we all ought to listen more closely to the messages our body sends us about what it needs and what it doesn’t need.

Oh, and for those in my audience who don’t know what the fuck “edging” is, it’s a stop/start masturbation technique designed to prolong the time it takes a guy to reach his climax. An edger will begin to wank like normal, but when he gets near to cumming — he stops stroking, sometimes even squeezing his cock till the urge to shoot subsides. Once the urge to cum quiets down, he begins to stroke again. Stopping again whenever he approaches climax. He repeats this whole ‘stop and start’ cycle for as many times as he would like, so that when he finally shoots he’ll have a stronger orgasm and he’ll spew more spunk.

I know a lot of men who edge and they swear by it. I also know that a number of these men are doing themselves a disservice, even harm, because they are practicing an extreme version of edging. In the end, despite the stand-up nature of our dick, it is a very delicate instrument. Intense edging, especially accompanied by nasty squeezing or slapping to quell the building ejaculation can be injurious.

So maybe, Dylan, just maybe ya oughta take a break from edging for a while and see if this burning issue doesn’t resolve itself.